So you’ve joined the Twitter revolution and created an account to promote your business or brand…but what now?
Step into the New Year with a better grasp of the functions available in the Twitter-sphere. From ‘following’ to ‘administration’, we’re taking it back to basics so you can manage your account, brand and followers.
One of the most important aspects of Twitter is the terminology. You do need to understand the concepts of #hash tags, tweet ups and twitter lists.
To get you on your way here’s a quick run down of some of the basics. We’ve covered some of these before in our previous blog, however, it doesn’t hurt to revisit some of these.
Twitter Stream: this is the real time update of yours, and your followers’ activity. It’s the easiest way to keep up to date with what’s happening and when, as well as to announce smaller ‘wins’ within your business that don’t warrant a press release.
Tweet-Up: an informal event organized for a specific topic to be discussed, and for users to network. For instance, people attending an event or conference can extend a discussion.
Twitter Lists: a public or private list that any Twitter user can create to generate a Tweet stream involving particular people. They are a great way of measuring influence while organizing your followers. A ‘list’ link appears on yours, and your followers account. Just create a name for your list, and select followers that relate to your market or interests.
Hashtag (#): a way to tag to compile and find a collection of tweets relating to a specific topic, event or theme. Simply add a hash (#) before a word or phrase within the tweet.
@Reply: a message tweeted between two users on a public forum. Add @username anywhere within the tweet. For example: @PRGuruAu: Well done on the NYE guide @HeraldSunMelbourne
Now we’ll look at some of the free tools to help you manage your account to increase your visibility on news feeds and your ranking in online search. For instance:
TweetDeck is one of the most popular dashboards that allows you to browse, sort and manage while still tweeting from it. You can divide the deck into columns of your followers’ stream, your incoming tweets and your own activity. Hootsuite is similar. It allows you to manage, browse and send messages.
Tweet Spinner lets you schedule tweets, reply to direct messages as well as change you profile and settings. This means that your account is always active, increasing followers and potential consumers.
Do you want to shorten your URL address? Yes. Then Bitly does just this. Better still, you can customize your brand as part of the URL and monitor and track activity.
Tweet Grader allows you to find and follow the ‘Tweeting elite’ in your city or country.
Muck Rack and Journalist Tweets are great to find, filter or follow journalists globally.
Analytical tools such as Twitalyzer track influence, velocity and how often you or your competition is mentioned in others tweets.
And, then there’s Viral Heat that attracts a monthly subscription. Depending upon the fee, you can catagorize tweets into positive, negative and neutral; track active tweeters, videos and websites and tweets including URL addresses.
So in 2012, take tweeting to the next level and see how your influence and followers grow! Happy tweeting!
